Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Does Mr. McCallion accept that given the increase in population and the number of people in employment increasing, the timescale within the Department and the HSE is no longer adequate to deal with the demands on the service?

There is an additional problem with the growth in population among the older age group. It will be 1 million people within the next five years. We are not going fast enough in the delivery of services and the delivery of capacity. We can employ all we like until such time as we have the infrastructure for those people to work within the system. I do not believe we are dealing fast enough with that.

We need to put new infrastructure in place, and we need to do so very fast.